by Tahir Shah
“Wouldn’t the cows get a bit cold?” I asked. “After all, they would be on a gigantic frozen ship.”
J.P. Kamaraj let out a piercing shriek of laughter.
“Oh, no!” he shouted. “Of course cows wouldn’t get a chill … they’ll be snug and warm.”
“But it would be absolutely freezing!”
The scientist shook his head. He had worked everything out. Cupping a hand around his mouth, he pressed it to my ear.
“Central heating …” he whispered. “Every cow will be having central heating.”
FOURTEEN
The Secret Army
A few minutes before seven a.m., the scam-artist tugged at my collar, waking me from a deep slumber. He said the train had been held up for five hours in the night; and that Tatanagar, Jamshedpur’s station, was a mile or so away.
“I don’t need your help, thank you very much!” I snarled.
The delay was fortuitous. Without it, I would undoubtedly have missed the stop. A heifer had been struck by the locomotive on a remote stretch. Obviously a pious Hindu, the driver had alighted to offer prayers to the beast’s spirit.
As I was making ready to descend at Jamshedpur’s station, J.P. Kamaraj, the Pykrete scientist, wished me luck on my journey of observation. He was proceeding on a connecting train to Hatia to buy wood pulp for his floating Pykrete temple. Before getting down, I looked over to where the mischievous boy had been sitting. But he had gone.
Jamshedpur was a change from the faded pomp and grandeur of Calcutta. Although boasting a population of almost a million, it seemed strangely deserted. Gone were the colonial palaces and the jarring hordes of people. Gone, too, was the iron-black, corrosive air of Calcutta, now replaced by a lighter variety of pollution.
One of the only planned modern cities in India, Jamshedpur was the idea of Jamshedji Tata, Parsi industrialist and pioneer of Indian steel production. Tata realized that with its rich coal deposits and limestone quarries, the site was perfectly suited to heavy industry. Work on the city began in 1908, with the first of Tata’s steel hitting the market four years later.
Whereas the majority of Indian towns support a hotchpotch of unrelated businesses and professions, Tata’s metropolis is dedicated to the glory of metal. You only make your home there if cast-iron is your passion. For the thousands of workers who reside in the neat lines of white-roofed bungalows, iron is the most magical substance on Earth.
Before seeking out the psychiatric hospital, in search of the godman, I went into town to get some breakfast. As I sat at Quality Restaurant on Main Road, slurping milky coffee and leaning back dangerously on my chair, I made out a familiar high-pitched patter. It came from the far end of the room beside the confectionery counter. Quality’s customers were being invited to try their luck in a trick of simple conjury. On offer was a lump of flint-like rock the size of an ice-hockey puck, said by the boy to contain gold.
One or two hopefuls had already parted with their money. The boy’s threat to accompany me seemed to have been more than a passing remark. Wrapping the magician’s map around my head like an Edwardian bonnet, I hoped to remain disguised until the danger had passed. Five minutes went by, and I sensed the rascal had taken his routine elsewhere. With caution, I peeled the chart away from my left eye. He seemed to have gone. But then there was a tap on my shoulder.
“Are you lost?”
“Oh, no … why don’t you leave me alone?”
“I told you,” said the boy, slipping easily on to a chair at my table, “I’m coming with you on your journey. I’ve already made up my mind.”
“If you don’t leave me alone I’ll call the police,” I said firmly.
“That’s fine with me,” he replied. “The police are so stupid … I make more money from tricking them than anyone else! My name is Bhalu,” he said.
“I don’t care what your name is … you’re a nasty little trickster who should be at school.”
“Trickster,” repeated the boy, “I like that … I’m a trickster. From now on I’m the Trickster!”
I paid the waiter and left the cafe. What else could motivate a junior con-artist but the prospect of liberating my already limited funds? The experience on the Farakka Express had hardened me. No longer was I the gullible, pathetic traveler I had so recently been.
The boy followed me outside. Before insisting once again that he was going to join me, he tossed the precious gold ore pebble into some bushes.
“Wasn’t that a bit too valuable to get rid of like that?” I asked.
The child guffawed menacingly.
“No …” he cackled. “I just picked it up before going in there. Those people were so stupid, weren’t they?”
When a rickety taxi pulled up, I took it to the mental asylum on the western outskirts of town, alone.
Not having called at an institution for the insane before, I was, I must admit, rather apprehensive. The nature of my visit further added to my anxiety. This being India, anything could happen, the worst case being that I would be mistaken for an inmate and pushed into a padded cell.
A refined group of what looked like respectful pilgrims had clustered on a strip of grass outside the asylum’s entrance. They stared at the ground sheepishly as my taxi passed them.
Twenty minutes after arriving at the small psychiatric hospital, I had managed to get access to the building. The overriding problem was that no one spoke a word of English. I began to mime out what a luminary might look like, but soon curtailed such gesticulations, for fear of being thought to be insane myself. I repeated the name of the godman – Gupta – four times, to a man who was typing at an old Triumph. He hunched his shoulders and rolled his lower lip downwards, revealing a set of rotting teeth.
My own stupidity had brought me to the institution without a translator. I turned to leave the reception. But someone was standing in the doorway. It was the Trickster.
“How did you find me here?” I yelled. “Why the hell are you spying on me?”
“You need someone to talk to the officials?”
“Yes …”
Addressing the typist respectfully, Bhalu the Trickster explained who I was looking for. The official glanced at me, then at the ceiling and the floor. Then he laughed.
“Guptaji!” he cried.
“Yes, he knows the godman,” said the Trickster. “I can translate for you if you want.”
Before I could protest, the street conjuror was leading the way through the low-security asylum to meet the ascetic. It was as if he had been there before. Perhaps, I mused, he was a former inmate.
The sanatorium was crowded with middle-aged men. Its white-washed corridors stank of extra strength bleach and what appeared to be musk aftershave. Dormitories led off to the left and right, confined rooms with six or seven beds, a single barred window and a bare light bulb. Most of the doors, although wide open, were fitted with twin locks. There were no guards to be seen. As I passed them, the patients stared at me, giggling and laughing out loud. Some had an air of despondency; others, a silent acceptance of their situation.
The godman was sitting cross-legged in a shaded graveled square, formed where four of the dormitory buildings came together in a cross. A dozen or so other patients were dotted about nearby. Some were reading; others chatting to each other or themselves.
I observed the swami attentively. He was exceedingly old; his features gnarled and mutated, like a sculptor’s putty model. He wore a simple white lungi, a shabby string vest, and a leather amulet around his neck. Venky’s information was, I suspected, extremely out-of-date.
The asylum’s clerk bent down and tapped the master on the shoulder. The mystic did not move.
“Is he dead?”
“No, he’s in a trance,” explained Bhalu.
Again the clerk tapped, and this time the ancient stirred.
Bhalu translated his frail words:
“Visitors?” he puffed. “You know I don’t like visitors!”
“But, swami, t
his man has come from Englezabad, the city of English!”
“All the way from the city of English?”
The clerk nodded.
“From the Bangladesh border?”
“Yes,” said the clerk, “all the way from the border with Bangladesh.”
There seemed to be some confusion. I had come from the country of England, not the former British trading post called Englezabad, or English Bazar, near Malda in West Bengal. Surely it was obvious I was not a Bengali? I corrected the clerk. He informed the pandit.
Drawing his fingers through the dirt beside him like the prongs of a rake, the sage gestured for me to sit.
“Oh great swami,” I said reverently, “I am on a journey of observation, sent by my respected teacher, Hakim Feroze.”
The godman did not respond. Emitting a feeble cough, he slouched his head forward. There was little life left in him.
“Exalted swami,” I said to Bhalu, expecting the boy to translate, “I have come in search of miracles. You are a mystic of great repute … I have heard about the wondrous feats which you perform. Could you demonstrate a miracle to me?”
Opening his eyes no more than a crack, the guru choked out a string of words.
“He’s asking if you doubt his abilities,” said the Trickster.
“No … no,” I said, “but I have come a long way to see his miracles.”
“Yes,” said the swami solemnly, “you have come from Englezabad. That is a long way.”
Without further conversation, he pulled something from his lungi. It was a nail. But this was no ordinary nail. Crafted from twisted steel, it was about five inches long, and as wide as an HB pencil. Tilting his head back, he rammed the sliver of metal up his right nostril. Inch by inch, it disappeared. One or two inches would be understandable. Every schoolboy has experimented with sticking hair-pins up his nose. Two inches, perhaps three, is the extent of a child’s ability. But the godman’s proficiency went far beyond a child’s experimentation. Five inches. Where did it go? How could it have avoided puncturing the brain? The swami withdrew the nail with his fingertips.
“That’s no miracle,” whispered the Trickster. “I have done it myself so many times. The nail just goes up into the sinus. It’s a street trick!”
Bhalu was probably right. This was a simple illusion.
The sage seemed pleased at the praise which I lavished upon him. He confirmed the nail had not killed him outright because of a miracle of notable potency.
As I applauded, the godman performed another trick.
“Now,” he explained slowly, “I am going to stop my heart beating.”
He called for the clerk to fetch a doctor’s stethoscope from the sanatorium’s surgery. The typist, who was enjoying the demonstrations, hurried away, returning a few minutes later with the well-worn apparatus.
The avatar pulled up his string vest, revealing a torso ridged with deep horizontal lines. He pressed his thumb to his chest, indicating that the contrivance was to be applied to the skin over the heart. The clerk passed me the stethoscope. I put the earpieces in place and pressed the cool metal of the sound receiver to the guru’s chest. As we crouched on the gravel of the asylum’s courtyard, in the comfortable shade of champa trees, I realized I was examining a man who ought to have been dead.
“There’s no heartbeat at all.”
The swami, who had closed his eyes again, seemed to have slipped into unconsciousness. His heart appeared to have stopped. Was the miracle done in the same way as Feroze’s walnut trick? I searched for walnuts. There were none.
“I think he may have actually died,” I said anxiously. After all, I had come in search of miracles, not to kill the inmates.
The clerk seemed quite blase about the godman’s condition.
“He always recovers,” he said lackadaisically.
“You mean he performs this miracle often?”
“Oh, very frequently.”
As he spoke, the swami emerged from his coma. The sound of his heartbeat grew from the faintest whisper to that of a healthy man.
The avatar stared at the dirt on which we sat.
“I first developed miraculous feats when I was just a boy,” he explained.
“That was no miracle,” proclaimed the Trickster in English.
“But there wasn’t any heartbeat at all,” I said. “I know how to stop the pulse in an arm with a walnut, but this is quite something else.”
Bhalu, the street conjuror, looked at me with disgust.
“Look at the illusion,” he said.
“What illusion? What am I missing?”
The scam-artist explained:
“When you raised the stethoscope to the old man’s chest, did you notice how he filled his lungs very full of air?”
“Yes, I did observe that.”
“Well,” said Bhalu, “the air is like a cushion … it soaks up the force of the heartbeat. In any case, he’s an old man, so his beats are not so strong.”
I had to admit, the Trickster was very observant. And yet it was I who had embarked on the journey of observation.
I wondered how Guptaji had landed up in the clinic in the first place.
“Oh great master,” I said, oozing with adulation, “why do they keep you here? What deranged behavior do they accuse you of?”
Twisting his neck in slow motion like that of a turtle, the godman faced me.
“No one keeps me here,” he replied. “I’m not mad, you know.”
I prodded the Trickster. He looked at the clerk.
“Of course he’s not demented,” said the typist. “Half the patients here are totally sane – they have been cured. They even have certificates to prove it.”
“But then why don’t they leave?”
The clerk shook his head.
“They have nowhere to go,” he responded. “Most have been disowned by their families. Many don’t even know where their families are. When they move house, they don’t inform us. People consider it a curse to have an insane relative.”
“But when was the guru remedied and permitted to leave?”
The typist scratched his head and thought for a moment.
“In 1969,” he said.
* * * *
The encounter with the ancient swami came to a premature end. Exhausted after performing only two miracles, he fell into a deep sleep. The clerk advised me that, now in his nineties, the mystic was finding it difficult to perform the feats which had brought him fame.
The Trickster led me back through the hospital’s corridors to the main gate. I sensed that he was hoping to muscle in on my journey. As before, I was distinctly distrustful of his motives. Like a member of the Thuggee brotherhood, he was, I felt sure, prepared to spend as much time as necessary in gaining my trust. Then, when I least expected it, he would relieve me of my few belongings. My conscience warned me of the danger. He may have had the appearance of a child, but this was no meek schoolboy; he was a walking crime wave.
At the hospital gates I thanked Bhalu for his help in translating. The service had been recompense for the inconvenience of tricking me in Calcutta. Our arrangement was now at an end. Thank you and goodbye.
As it was a fine afternoon – warm air scented with fir trees – I grasped my bag and started to walk the three or four miles back to Jamshedpur. The asylum, which attracted few visitors, had no need for a taxi rank.
Bhalu asked again if he could accompany me on my journey. He said he’d pay his own way and keep out of trouble. Replying that he could not tag along, I pressed on down the long, dusty trail heading east. Stepping in my footprints, the Trickster followed.
After half an hour we were nearing Jamshedpur. I was regretting the choice of walking, for my bag was quite heavy. Bhalu was still treading in my footsteps, about ten paces behind.
As we approached a bend in the road, he suddenly ran up and pushed me into the ditch which ran alongside the road. I fell head-first into a layer of fermenting filth.
“Damn you! Yo
u horrible boy!” I scolded, clambering out. “I'm covered in muck. I'm going to kill you when I catch you.”
One would have expected him to have scampered off after waging such an unprovoked attack. But Bhalu stood his ground. He was pointing to something on the side of the road. It was the severed body of a large toffee-brown scorpion. Picking up the tail-end in one hand, he displayed an unwieldy hunting knife in the other.
“You were about to stand on this scorpion,” he said. “There was no time to explain.”
But I’ve got shoes on, the sting wouldn’t have penetrated their soles.”
Haven’t you ever heard of jumping Bihari scorpions?” he asked.
I looked at the boy, the knife, and what was left of the scorpion. He had certainly acted with honed reflexes. Who knows what would have happened if I had been taken unawares by a jumping scorpion? The Trickster threw the arachnid’s tail into the ditch. He shuffled back into line, preparing to stamp forward in my footsteps again. His eyes were focused on the ground; his features frozen in a pathetic expression exuding meekness.
“All right,” I said coldly, “you can accompany me for a while. But any trouble and that’s it.”
My attitude may have been brusque, but I was adamant I would not fall victim to my customary myopia again. Even as I agreed to let the scam-artist tag along, I was having grave doubts.
* * * *
Over breakfast the next day, I filled Bhalu in on my catalog of misfortune. First, I told him of how as a student I was deceived in southern Spain. Then of how my belongings were pilfered in Brazil.
Then I explained how I was drugged and robbed on the infamous Farakka Express. All over the world people were traveling on my passports, driving on my licenses, spending my money; and whole communities were kitted out with my belongings. I had had enough.
“Ah, chakotra,” said the Trickster fondly, “that’s a great one, I use it often.”
“You mean you have drugged people on trains and then robbed them?”
“Many times,” said the boy casually, lighting a biri.